Teen kept from family for over 1 year asks Mass. govt to let her go home (VIDEO)

Justina Pelletier, a teenager from Connecticut, has been kept from her family by the Massachusetts government for 16 months as a battle raged over care for the ill girl. Now she may finally be able to go home.

Justina’s family posted a video of her pleas to return to
Connecticut. “All I want is to be with my family and my
friends back home right now. ... I need to be home with my
family. Please let me go home right now,” the 16-year-old
said from a wheelchair.

“Through the entire 16 months of this tragedy, the one person
we’ve not heard from publicly is Justina herself. Now we can see
her in her own words asking Judge [Johnston] and Governor Patrick
for her release,” Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a spokesman for the
Pelletier family, said in a statement.

Justina’s case gained national prominence in the US over issues
of medical child abuse - a syndrome in which parents fake
illnesses in children to gain attention - and parental rights,
the Boston Globe reported.

Justina’s parents say their daughter suffers from mitochondrial
disorder, a rare genetic illness that can cause severe fatigue
and intestinal issues. She was being treated by Mark Korson, a
metabolic disorders specialist at Tufts Medical Center outside
Boston, Mass. She had been a patient there for several years when
Dr. Korson told her parents to take Justina to a
gastroenterologist at Boston Children’s Hospital in February
2013, Slate reported.

But Justina never saw the gastroenterologist, and she never
returned home.

Doctors at Children’s concluded her difficulty walking and
intestinal problems were due to psychological issues. They
diagnosed her with somatic symptom disorder, a psychiatric
condition akin to hypochondria, according to Slate. They filed
allegations of suspected child medical abuse, and the
Massachusetts Department of Children and Families was granted
permanent legal custody of Justina in March, despite protests
from her family and her doctor at Tufts. Judge Joseph Johnston
sided with DCF, saying that the agency had proved during
closed-door juvenile court hearings that “the Pelletiers were
unfit to handle their child’s complex needs and should not be
restored custody of their child,” the
Boston Globe reported at the time.

Justina spent a year in a locked psychiatric ward before being
moved to a residential facility two hours from her parents’ home
in Hartford, Conn. The family was allowed weekly supervised
visits during that time, ABC News reported.

Just before the commonwealth was granted permanent custody of
Justina in March, Johnston ruled that she would get treatment
with Dr. Korson and her original team of doctors at Tufts.

“We are exasperated and exhausted," Lou Pelletier said
to ABC News at the time. "These are false medical abuse
charges against our family for supposed unnecessary surgery,
going to some of the top doctors in the country, medically
verified and insurance approved. I should be happy about the this
latest victory, but I am not."

When he granted Massachusetts permanent custody of the girl,
Johnston wrote that the Pelletiers had called Boston Children’s
personnel Nazis “and claimed the hospital was punishing and
killing Justina. Efforts by hospital clinicians to work with the
parents were futile and never went anywhere,” according to
the Boston Globe.

Later that month, Johnston wrote, “There has not been any
progress by the parents. Rather, the parents . . . continue to
engage in very concerning conduct that does not give this court
any confidence they will comply with conditions of custody.”

At the beginning of May, the Massachusetts Department of Health
and Human Services created a reunification plan for the Pelletier
family, which would allow Justina to return home to her parents
Lou and Linda, but where DCF would retain custody of the girl,
TheBlaze reported at the time. A week later, she was transferred
to a therapeutic education center in Connecticut.

The conditions laid out by the commonwealth were: Attend visits
with their daughter at the center in her home state, follow
through with the medical care plan created by Dr. Korson and the
Tufts team, participate in family therapy and meet with DCF to
review their progress.

“We are confident that we have found the right pathway for
Justina to return home as soon as possible so she can continue
her strong recovery in Connecticut,” Massachusetts HHS
Secretary John Polanowic wrote in a letter to the Massachusetts
House of Representatives Minority Leader Brad Jones. “This is
an important step forward in an extremely complex situation. We
all want Justina to return home soon, and this plan provides a
roadmap to make that happen.”

Over the weekend, Justina was allowed a brief visit home to
attend her sister’s dance recital, which is when the family made
the video. DCF filed a motion last week to reconsider and dismiss
the charges against the Pelletiers, TheBlaze reported.

“We are pleased that the family has engaged around the
reunification plan and we have filed papers in court to support
our shared goal of bringing Justina home,” Alec Loftus, a
spokesman for the state’s Health and Human Services department,
said in an emailed statement.

The family hopes that Justina will be home in time for Father’s
Day on Sunday. The Pelletiers have not taken any further legal
steps against the commonwealth of Massachusetts, but “one
would expect the Pelletiers to use every recourse to hold
government accountable to ensure this never happens again,”
Mahoney told
TheBlaze.